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LIEUT. GENERAL U. S. GEANT, 



Services and Characteristics, 



AS SKETCHED AND DELIVERED BY 



MAJOR-GEN. B. S. ROBERTS, 



BEFORE THE 



FACULTY AND STUDENTS OF YALE COLLEGE, 



BY INVITATION, OCTOBER, 1865, 



AND AGAIN READ TO THE LEGISLATURE OF CONNKOTICUT, 
BY SPECIAL INVITATION, IN 1866, AT ITS 



SESSION AT NEW HAVEN, CONN. 



NEW HAVEN : 

PRINTED BY THOMAS J. STAFFORD. 
1869. 



LIEUT.-GENEEAL U. S. GRANT, 



Services and Characteristics, 



AS SKETCHED AND DELIVERED BY 



MAJOR-GEN. B. S. KOBEKTS, 



BEFORE THE 



FACULTY AND STUDENTS OF YALE COLLEGE, 



BY INVITATION, OCTOBER, 1865, 



AND AGAIN READ TO THE LEGISLATURE OF CONNECTICUT, 
BY SPECIAL INVITATION, IN 1866, AT ITS 



SESSION AT NEW HAVEN. CONN. 






NEW HAVEN : 

PRINTED BY THOMAS J. STAFFORD. 

18G9. 



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:k(£ 



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New Haven, Conn., December 1, 1869. 

The services of General Qrakt, and his characteristics, as I understood 
and drew them in 1865, before the Faculty and Students of Yale College, 
and afterwards before the Legislature of Connecticut, I am urged by many 
of my friends to publish in this form. 

Heretofore I have refused to accede to solicitations to put forth this 
pamphlet, for reasons that may suggest themselves readily to persons 
appreciating the relations of officers of the army to their commanding 
General. 

Such reasons no longer exist; and now, with reluctance, however, 
I consent to deliver to the public, as common property, my views of the 
qualities of the great Captain that mastered the rebellion and saved the 
Union. 

His life and public services the past four years are the best com- 
mentaries that can be offered to show that I rightly judged the man, and 
did not exaggerate the substantive qualities that constitute his genuine 
greatness. 

B. S. ROBERTS. 

Brevet Brigadier-General U. S. A. 



a; 



ADDRESS. 



The fact that five years ago the name of Ulysses S. Grant 
was not known outside of the corporate limits of the vilhige 
of Galena, Illinois, and is now prominent among the conspic- 
uous names that fill the world with their fame, is conclusive 
proof of extraordinary traits and characteristics in the Lieu- 
tenant-General, who in that short period of time has been ele- 
vated to the command of the armies of the United States. 
The proof is still stronger, if we consider that this sudden 
promotion to so dazzling an attitude, has occurred in a country 
famous for its remarkable men and its great transitions in po- 
litical and social systems, precipitating the slow progression of 
past centuries and hastening the civilization of the world. 

Remarkable times produce remarkable men. . The progress 
that culminates in revolution is slow, but revolution takes re- 
sistless power, and speed forges and forms greatness of charac- 
ter, and brings into prominence genuine manhood. The ener- 
gies and strength of men reach more sudden maturity in the 
struggle, though they were born with the infant, slept through 
adolescence, and only burst the mind's sw^addlings when the 
occasion that magnetized their growth, vitalized their action, 
and magnified their power, bursts upon them. 

Grant would doubtless, at this day, have been selling his | 
father's leather in Galena, if John C. Calhoun and Jeflferson \ 
Davis had never been born. A six hundred dollar salary i 
would still have satisfied the real wants of the clerk, whose 
transition has passed him, in the brief period of four years, 
to the metropolis of the country, where his thronged levees 
require a regal exchequer to meet the current expenses of a 
single fashionable season. Mrs. Grant, who then spread a fru-\ 
gal dinner, cooked and laid by her willing and helping hands, 
was content to appear in matronly calicoes and dimities, im- 



maculate and fresh from the hmndry. Now the vexation and 
worry of her life are, to find appropriate point lace from Brus- 
sels' looms and satins from Lyons' mills to o;race the table where 
twenty courses are spread, where contrabands in pure white 
kids, and Biddys in starch and Marseilles, attend in the state- 
liness of royal livery, to pour Burgundy and to change courses 
for Ambassadors and Plenipotentiaries, whose arms are quar- 
tered with kingly crests. Archdukes and Crown Princes take 
seats of honor on Mrs. Grant's right, and exchange salutations 
over iced wines and sparkling Rheims, Three years ago this 
tanner's clerk sat alone with Mrs. Grant, and gratified thirst 
with nature's unadulterated l)everage, without the refreshing 
coolness of ice, even in dog daj's. Noblemen from all coun- 
tries, statesmen, men of letters, doctors and professors of di- 
vinity and science, the aristocrat and the plebeian, the man of 
fashion and the millionaire, who three years ago had never 
heard pronounced the name of U. S. Grant, now crowd the 
avenues of Washington to do honor to the General who fought 
it out on that line, though it took him more than all summer, 
and smote with fire and sword through and through the rebel- 
lion. 

Instances are not rare in the world's history of the elevation 
of men from places of obscurity to thrones and empires. But 
they have been the creatures of chance, and the tools that for- 
tune, ignorance or fanaticism have played with. Time and 
circumstances forbid any contrasts of the cases ; for in no pre- 
vious age have thirty millions of people of enlightened and 
exalted intelligence united in doing honor and making homage 
to a man of mere circumstance and chance. Grant is not a 
man of destiny. He was not cast upon the tide at flood and 
borne on to fortune. He planned the house he now lives in, 
and built it himself. No man has ever lived of whom it may 
be more truthfully said, he was the architect of his own for- 
tune. He entered the war, in 1861, without the patronage of 
any party, without the influence of partisan friends, without 
the prestige of wealth, without the power of military or family 
friends. When he first marched his Illinois regiment of vol- 
unteers into Kentucky, his only reliance was the "blade" he 
knew so well h'ow to use, and the determined loyalty of his 



men, who knew their leader. Few, if any one Colonel of over 
three thousand, that drew their blades in their loyal resolves 
to vindicate their country, went forth with less promise than 
Grant. Not one returned who claimed to be his peer. He 
carved his own way to fame — " a fame that is not of tavern 
song," and that will endure wliile time and history perpetuate 
the memorials of great and undying names. 

The type of Grant's mind received its impress in the vast- 
ness of the great West. He was no exception among most 
men of broad views and comprehensive understanding, and 
matured by progressive development, without the exacting 
strain of hard study, and its wear and tear on immature intel- 
lect, destroying the nervous equilibrium that gives stability of 
thought and depth of penetration. At West Point he was 
not distinguished as a student, and made no efforts to lead his 
class. Yet he easily mastered the highest practical science 
tauglit there, without the hard labor of many cadets, whose 
academic eminence gave them precedence over him on the 
graduating list. In fact, none of the notable traits of his char- 
acter were developed there, and, in his habits and life as a 
student, nothing that could illustrate the future great Captain 
was foreshadowed ; although it is beyond peradventure, that 
the broad basis of his military fame was laid there. In this 
there is nothing singular. The student of men does not look 
to the boy in the seminary for the character of the finished 
man. It is not the school, but the events of life, that energize 
the brain and expand its powers. Institutes lay the founda- 
tion for the growth and proportions of man's capabilities ; but 
in the contest of life these capabilities take their strength, 
and its great struggles try and determine their value and mag- 
nitude. The brain may be great and good, and yet never be 
electrified into activity. Physical organization and abuse of 
nature may vitiate all its powers and so degrade its divinity, 
that ennobling thoughts find no self-acting principle, and they 
degenerate into idiotic coma. But the active brain of Grant, 
restless, but well balanced, growing, but not in enfeebling and 
wasting haste, has been forged and hammered out under a 
welding process of liard blows, adding, by incremental and 
cumulative strength, symmetry and shape, until, in its status 



6 

of maturity, its texture is without flaw, constituting unerring 
reasoning powers and logical accuracy of judgment. Its en- 
durance is a marvel. It is one of those peculiar minds that 
never tires, and thinks while others sleep. His physical con- 
Btiiution, not less remarkable, enables him to toil and plan, 
when, with others, exhaustion requires forgetfulness and repose. 
He lies down to think, and rises to execute, when others wake 
to plan. This harmony of physique and brain in Grant is one 
of the most striking characteristics of his greatness. "Without 
it no General can ever accomplish great achievements. If the 
endurance and strength of the body are in conflict with the 
phrenol constitution, and are in preponderance, the mind must 
give way and its will enfeebled by anxiety, responsibility, care 
and fatigue, bends under their weight, and the scepter of com- 
mand must pass to another. The power of command is the 
magnetism of strong brain and unyielding will. Yet few wills 
are of that unbending strength, that enfeebled and decaying 
physique will not, in its waste and wear, sooner or later subju- 
gate them. But in the automony of Grant's constitution, the 
self-working codperation of brain and muscle furnish the key 
to all his successes, and resolve the secret of his greatness. 
They were the especial gift of God, who created him for the 
accomplishment of the great purposes of saving to man the 
civilization born in a stable in Bethlehem. 

There is nothing in his nature that academicians would style 
^'genius,^^ — nothing, in fact, that is "kith or kin " to such 
weakness. The very idea of genius is suggestive of imperfec- 
tion of character. The man of genius may possess the most 
brilliant and dazzling characteristics, and receive, as he de- 
serves, unbounded adulation and applause. But his automony 
is imperfect, and he can never become truly great. He is a 
machine of beautifully-tinished parts, highly burnished and 
polished. But a "screw is loose" in the mechanical combina- 
tion, and when the strain of work tries every joint, beam, bolt, 
pinion and piston, constituting unfailing manhood, he fails to 
accomplish the more mighty purposes of human agencies, 
when relative homogeneity of powers succeed. Grant's compo- 
sition is made up of sterner stuff. Strong warp and woof in- 
grain every tibre of his nature, and the raw material that 



stitch the parts is not weakened by coloring and sizing that 
eat a single thread. He is wool-dyed. No stamped and ex- 
ternal coloring give false luster to the man. He wears like 
the mosaics and frescoes of the ancient masters, and the wear 
and friction of time bring out in brighter and bolder relief the 
polish and harmony of nature's composition and colors. At 
Belmont, at Fort Donelson, at Shiloh, at Vicksburg, at Chat- 
tanooga, and in the more gigantic struggles on the Rappahan- 
nock, through the Wilderness, and around to the Appomatox 
apple tree, illustrations of these unyielding elements in Grant's 
character are clearly and unmistakably established. The un- 
relaxing grasp he laid upon Lee at Richmond and Petersburg, 
increasing daily the torsion of the hold that there girdled the 
throat of the rebellion, and by slow degrees strangled it, show 
the inevitable consequences of resolves well matured and pur- 
sued with inflexible determination, as clearly as they illustrate 
the great qualities of the stubborn General, who had calculated 
their cost. 

Grant did not blindly precipitate his army upon the slaugh- 
ter-pens between the Rapidan and James Rivers. He knew 
that his road to Richmond would make an Appian way, by 
whatever route he moved ; for he knew the desperation of 
Lee's frenzied army and the determination of its Generals. 
These slaughter-pens had all been laid and prepared before 
Grant came to supreme command, and their strength, Lee's 
unweakened army, and the obstacles to be overcome in the pe- 
culiar geography of the country, had all been calculated by 
Grant. He had counted their cost of life with the precision of 
his estimates for ordnance and subsistence. The great moral 
struggle was in the undertaking, and few men have been cre- 
ated whose morale would not have been shaken in view of the 
sacrifice. But Grant had been called to the execution of a 
problem, that was to determine the life or death of his govern- 
ment. Duty and loyalty take deep r<>ot in strong natures, 
and with Grant these ideas are in the depth of his moral na- 
ture, and mingle with his religion and his God. His unalloyed 
manhood did not permit him to make dalliance with events or 
reason with consequences, without comparison in their propor- 
tions with any undertaking ever before planned by man, when 



8 

his loyal nature was convinced by sugo^estions of duty, that 
the work was to be done. He girded himself for the work, 
and went straight at it. He h^d no struggles of conscience, 
no remorses, no unmanly weaknesses, as from day to day, 
through that wilderness of tire and slaughter, ninety thousand 
of his devoted aimy, slain and wounded, were left in his rear. 
Conscience made no accusations against the man that knew 
the sacrifice was demanded. Grant was called to avenge his 
country. The blood of that vengeance was not his shedding. 
He slept as quietly among the slain and dying at Spotsylvania, 
as on any night in his quiet village of Galena, with a mind 
only disturbed by the fluctuations of rates in the leather mar- 
kets, two years before. 

The physiological fact is admitted, that the countries in 
which men are born and live, materially give impression to 
their character, and mould, in a great degree, their notable 
peculiarities. The sternest types of men would naturally be 
formed where great obstacles are to be surmounted, where vast 
enterprises and pursuits call forth the energies, and where 
boundless resoucces call into play the activities of the people. 
Extent of territory, vastness of rivers, grand old mountains 
that range continents and gather eternal snows and clouds, 
illimitable prairies and plains, all have their effect and photo- 
graph impressions of greatness. It is, therefore, difficult and 
inconclusive to compare the characteristics of eminent men of 
different countries, as in the nature of things the measure of 
their greatness must vary with nature's panorama, physical 
constitution, and civilization. The achievements they accom- 
plish go down in history with the memorials and monuments 
that make their names immortal, and are, therefore, no tests or 
standards to adjudge their genuine grandeur of character. 

Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Persia and the old empires that 
rose to greatness, and whose kings have perished and are for- 
o-otten, stamped their characteristics on the monuments that 
remain to indicate their civilization and power. The pen of 
inspiration has traced the pro))ortion of their crimes, their 
effeminacy and their follies. The granite of their pyramids 
and sphynxes suggests a pomp and show of power and great- 
ness, based on false and unreal civilization, and the vicious 



ambition of personal aggrandizement and posthumous fame. 
Tlie character formed by such tides of time, cannot be c mi- 
pared with the character that stamps men of this day. G'>d I 
has winii -wed the earth of tiie dust of their composition In ' 
the birth of Christ a new divinity was impregnated, and 
quiclvened int» life character of higher and more exalted 
humanity. In the progress of this birth, the human family 
has recreated itself, and the hardier Anglo-American has sprung 
into life. 

We must therefore take the measure nf men of modern 
times aiid contrast the proporti >ns of their greatness with 
the magnitude of Grant's achievements, in order to compare 
their strengtii, and the texture of the material that constitutes 
character in this age and civilization. Europe, during the 
em[)ire of the first Napoleon, furnishes tiie most appropriate 
illustrations. Bonaparte and Wellington, in the conflict of 
arms that shook eyery throne on that con'inent, rose highest 
in military reputation, and gained renown that filled the world 
with the noise of their fame. Wellington's lines at Torres-Ve- 
dras may be compared with Grant's lines that covered Wash- 
ington and Chatanooga. But no military man can doul)t 
that Wellington, had he commanded Grant's Potomac army, 
would have fallen back on Washington, after the battles 
through the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania, and lost the cam- 
paign. Neither can there be any d>ubt that Grant, with the 
army Wellington commanded in Portugal, would have moved 
directly upon Spain, and never have fallen behind the Torres- 
Yedras hills, having once crossed them. Grant would have 
extemporized an invincible arm}' of Spaniards and Portuguese, 
as he advanced, and from the resources of the country supplied 
it. His magnetism would have aroused the fiery ardor of the 
people whose throne was usurped by a French Emperor, and 
whose ancient crown, yet radiant with the jewels of Ferdinand 
and Isabella, was intended to be dwarfed to fit the small brain 
of the first Napoleon's brother Joseph ; and though patriotism 
had nearly bruised out in a degenerate race, he would have 
electrified its ember fires and inflamed 20,000,000 of Spaniards 
and Portuguese with unconquerable patriotism. Grant would 
never have raised the first siege of Badajos on the deraonstra- 



10 

tionson Wellincrton's commnnications, and Wellington, beyond 
perad venture, would have abandoned the siege of Yicksburg 
on the movements of Johnson on Grant's rear ; and the Mis- 
sissippi river would jet have remained closed in the face of 
such leadei-ship as protracted the Peninsular war seven years. 
Grant would have hurled, with the suddenness of thunderbolts, 
the combined Prussian, Austrian, Eussian and English armies 
against N^apoleon's scattered columns at Quatre-bras and 
Jennappe, and crushed tliem in detail, so that the carnage 
of Waterloo would have been spared, had he been in Welling- 
ton's saddle. The allied armies and Generals had no concep- 
tion of the smashing, untiring energies of Grant's armies, nor, 
in fact, had the genius of the first Napoleon magnetized his 
troops and marshals with the ideas of invincibility, impressed 
by Grant on every army he commanded. 

If Grant had fought the battle of Borodina and entered 
Moscow, he would have wintered there, and Russia would 
have been at his feet, in an early spring campaign. His 
cavalry would have swept the Cossack horse from their steppes, 
and their cattle and wheat would have been gathered by his 
"bummers" in such abundance, that he could have doubled 
his rations of beef and bread to 100,000 soldiers, during the 
Ions continued Moscow winter. His army would have re- 
built the Kremlin before spring, and had pastime in theatricals 
and operas. His camp followers would have opened profitable 
trade and commerce with the " mujiks," so that Christmas 
holidays and the church carnival would have been celebrated 
by Greek Patriarchs in canonicals in procession with Yankee 
Generals in uniform. The loss of such a base of supplies as 
Aboukir would never have caused Grant to abandon an ai-my 
in Egypt and to return to France in a Mediterranean yacht, 
leaving his captains and a demoralized army to the disasters of 
a retreat before the keen edges of Damascus blades, wielded 
by the skill of Mameluke cavalry. His army would have 
rioted on the flesh pots of Pharaoh's successor.-:, and brought 
under contribution the granaries of the Potiphars to subsist his 
soldiers. Grant, however, would not have despoiled the country 
of its obelisks, sphynxes, sarcophagi, or mummies, as they 



11 

could not moblize his movements, feed his army, or forage his 
cavah-y. 

Yet England has made apotheosis of its " iron duke," and 
Westminster Abbey, where the dust of its Kings repose, was 
only deemed befitting sepulture for its most illustrious Captain. 
And France has built a mausoleum to receive the ashes of the 
first Napoleon, surpassing in its gorgeous and regal magnifi- 
cence, the splendor of the tombs of the Pharaohs of silent, 
sleeping Egypt. 

Grant organized and handled larger armies than Bonaparte 
or Wellington ever commanded. He had more to create and 
more to destroy, than man had ever before undertaken. He 
had greater obstacles to overcome than any General of any age 
ever attempted. His lines of communication were more ex- 
tended than the lines of Alexandre, when he guarded the 
coasts of ancient Macedon, and his sentinels trod their beat to 
the mountains of India. The enemy Grant had to subjugate 
was unconquerable. Their country offered natural lines of de- 
fense, more impregnable than Sebastopol was made by the 
skill of Todleben, and these lines were held by over 800,000 
troops of endurance, valor and determination, that made no 
dalliance with the alternative of victory or death. His vast 
armies had their supplies to transport hundreds of miles into 
the non-supplying States held by the rebels, so that his trains 
of wagons, ambulances and artillery, well closed up, not un- 
usually occupied /oHt/ miles of highway. The most determin- 
ed cavalry that ever raided on the rear and flanks of an army, 
constantly harassed these long columns of supply, and combats 
were of daily occurrence between his armed employes and 
organized guerrillas. He had mountains to scale in every 
direction, the Alleganies of the Appalachian Chain, rising as 
impassable fortresses from the Potomac to Chatanioga. His 
sappers and miners made and cleared roads, scaling these bar- 
ri( rs, that made Napoleon's passage of the Alps holiday work, 
by comparison. Rivers of the largest class and torrent force, 
and interminable swamps and morasses, had to be crduroyed 
and bridged in almost every day's march. As a rule the daily 
marches of his armies were combats, and his long lines of sup- 
ply and communication, were skirmish lines. Railroads he 



12 

constructed and covered by his armies as he advanced. His 
external line of circuinvallation extended from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific coast ; his inner cordon from the Potomac to 
the Rio-Grande. He cooperated with an ocean navy holdinor 
2500 miles of sea-coast, and closed up ports as strong as Cron- 
stadt, and quite has impregnable as Sebastopol. He also acted 
with an inland river-navy of gun-boats that held the Ohio and 
Missi-^sppi rivers and their tributaries, requiring cooperation 
in all interior expeditions. His army transported pontoon 
trains of unexampled size and proportion. Ambulatory 
arsenals and machine shops accompanied all his armies, so that 
on any day's halt his corps of mechanics could build or repair 
locomotives, make gun-carriages, ambulances and wagons, or 
railway cars. The States he inv^aded supplied him little or 
nothing, his enemy having adopted the muscovite policy of 
burning and destroying whatever they could not defend. 
Besides the usual means of destructiveness justified by the 
usages of war in the desperation and inhumanity of the rebels, 
they resorted to means of defense and destruction, never before 
used by any people. The progress of arms and projectiles had 
made civilized war destructive of life beyond any example ; 
but a system of torpedoes and self acting magazines had been 
planned and adopted by Grant's enemies, for the surer annihi- 
lation of ships entering harbors, and troops taking possession 
of cities and forts surrendered, j^evertheless Grant proceeded 
straight against all these gigantic difficulties and appalling 
dangers, without failure or defeat in any single campaign. He 
suffered reverses and met temporary checks. But in this great 
gladiatorial struggle for the life of his government, though often 
brought to his knee-:, giant-like in muscle, he rose and threw 
his adversar\\ lie had no dalliance with Southern Delilas, 
and was never shorne of his Samson strength. "When he rent 
the pillars of the foundation of the Southern Confederacy, he 
was not crushed in its fall ; but he took care that treason and 
traitors should perish beneath its ruin. 

The brain that magnetized the vast coil of human muscle in 
all the Union armies, and intensified its strength as he drew in 
its extended circumference, was Grant's. He was the princi- 
pal operator at the main battery, calculated the strain it would 



13 

bear, and regulated the consuming lightning played off at all 
its branches. 

Men, afrer all, must be measured by the magnitude of their ' 
achievements. If this just and only infallible rule is applied 
to Grant, his proportions of greatness and stature as a General 
have never been surpassed, if attained, since God created man. 
His work of four years, in its results, penetrating into depths 
of polities in war, government, and the energies of human ac- 
tivities, stands in conspicuous attitude and dazzling eminence 
above the deeds of any individual man of ancient or modern 
times. His hands have been upheld by captains second to none 
that have illumined histories of fame, and made their memo- 
ries imperishable. A people resolved to save the imprescrip- 
table rights of man, and soldiers of endurance, loyalty, pluck, 
resources and resolves, never before entering so largely the 
composition of armies, sustained him. But the job was 
Grant's. From the beginning of the work to its finishing 
stroke at the Appomatox apple tree, he was the vulcan at the 
forge, shaping the thunder and the bolts of war that smote 
down 8,000,000 of rebels, consuming traitors and treason, and 
delivering 3,000,000 of slaves from human bondage. 

Grant has never drawn largely from books. He carefully 
todk knowledge in homeopathic doses, knowing that small 
draughts, well digested, are better than over doses, gulped as 
purgatives. A single volume, well impressed and photograph- 
ed on the mind, is better than an Astor library hastily read 
aid as hastily forgotten. The intellect must be nourished, as 
the body is nourished. Neither should be overfed. To cram 
the stomach beyond its powei-s of digestion is not more de- 
structive of physical development, than overstraining the brain 
beyond its powers is ftital to its growth and strength. 

The basis of Grant's character was laid from the texts of the 
largest intellects. But he has built mainly on the study of 
men and the world, drawing practical knowledge and wisdom 
from them. He has applied the philosophy of his study to 
passing events and the transitions they are working in the 
structures of human government. He is a master in the 
school of mankind, and in this we find the key to his quick 
perceptions of true character. His penetration of men is in- 



u 

struct! ve. He has never been mistaken in tlie measure of the 
Generals he has selected for the execution of his chief com- 
mands. He had sounded the very depths of Sherman's 
gigantic intellect and knew the unfailing strength of his ner- 
vous energies, when he took the cloud by day and the pillar of 
fire by night and led his army of deliverance to the sea, Moses- 
like in faith, relying on the favor of G<>d for manna, deliver- 
ing from bondage four millions of "hewers of wood and 
drawers of water," for the Pharaohs of the nineteenth century. 
He had not mistaken Thomas, w4ien he trusted to that most 
solid soldier of the war, who had stood the brunt of twenty of 
its hardest f lught battles, the armies of Kentucky and Tennes- 
see, and with them added one more page to his brilliant chapter 
of achievements, by annihilating Hood's army before Na-shville. 
In the tactics, skill and tenacity of purpose of the hero of 
Gettysburg, he discovered the qualities of a General, who was 
to lead the veterans of the Army of the Potomac, to its 
crowning glories before Richmond and Petei-sburg. He had 
measured Phil Sheridan with the accuracy of " line and 
plummit," when in the Shenandoah Valley he said to him 
"go in," and the ride without orderly or escort from Win- 
chester to Cedar Creek, confirmed the unerring precision of 
that measurement. 
I Of Grant's moral and religious nature we know little or 
nothing. He sj)rang from the loins of good old puritan sires, 
j and if he inherited any of the pious qualities of good old 
' deacon Grant of Saybrook, Connecticut, he has never said 
anything about them. Judgment of Grant on this point 
must be formed from the rectitude of his conduct and the 
purity of his life. He has conformed, as nearly as man can, to 
the divine rule, " do unto others as you would they should do 
unto you ;" and in doing this, he illustrates a charity and love 
of neighbor that fulfills the Christian law of love. In his 
I nature there is not a shred of selfishness, and his justice is 
1 exact and God-like. He may have committed errors of judg- 
j ment, and infallibility is not human; but in his heart justice 
! reigns and mingles with its divinity and rules every act of his 
life. The generous and free acknowledgment of the services 
of his Lieutenants, finds honorable contrast with the " Ego " 



15 

tliat as a rule has characterized at all times the official reports 
of commanders of armies. His praise was never withheld, j 
where praise was due. The ignobility of larceny of character 
is as foreign to his ideas of justice, as larceny of another's 
purse ; and in his judgment a baser crime than highway 
robbery. His services were not exaggerated by appropriations 
of others' sacrifices. The dead and the living alike were 
fully appreciated, and he robbed none by " false balances or 
measures." His fame borrowed no lustre and reflects no honor 
won by others. Truth came " mended" from his pen. 

The remark was current in the army, when he gave little or 
no promise of eminent usefulness, "' Grant never harmed any- 
body but himself." But he had not then made a covenant 
with a million of the manhood of his country, and sealed it 
with their blood, not to betray the trust of the office they 
rendered up their lives to vest in him. Ulysses S. Grant to- 
day is not the Ulysses S. Grant of four years ago. His obli- 
gations now are to the country and the world, wiiose property 
he has become. The loyal dead, whose ashes repose in conse- 
crated sepultures from Maine to the Eio Grande, have large 
lieus on this property. This fact has taken deep root in his re- 
generated nature, and is the unyielding rule of his conduct. 
If he wrongs himself now, that wrong is not single. He 
wrongs the dead. This is his conviction. His convicti' ns of 
riffht are inviolable. No mere mortal has ever lived and 
reached his towering status among men, so guileless of wrong 
to his fellows, as Grant. In this is his strength, and in this is 
a guarantee, as unchanging as the laws of nature, that the con- 
fidence of the nation in his faith will never be betrayed. 

His singular reticence and silence deserve brief comment. 
On social occasions with his friends, he is as free of speech as 
Jack Falstaff, but in striking antithesis with that notabilijy of 
Shakespear's, in heroizing himself He loves a free, outspoken 
man, as suggestive of a clear conscience, and a good honest 
heart, that has nothing to conceal. But in official matters 
plans and designs requiring secrecy, he is as hermetically 
sealed and as closely corked as Ben. Butler was in Dutch-gap 
bottom. Tliis peculiarity was facetiously illustrated at one of 
the most critical periods of his operations before Richmond, 



16 

when universal anxiety prevailed, and when Grant's real 
strencrth was unknown to any one but himself. His brother 
visited his camp, and sharino-j in common with others, fears for 
his situation, ventured to try the cork by playfully remarking, 
" Ulyses, this is the largest army I ever saw; how many men 
have you ?" The Lieutenant-General continued smoking his 
cherout, apparently absorbed in calculating the numerals that 
would exactly respond to the honest question, gravely replied, 
" if the morning reports are correct, I have a good many." 
This satisfactory reply did not shake the confidence of his 
staff in his faculty of concealment. This faculty is close of kin 
to quality in a commander, and in its relation to his universa 
unconcern and external bearing, perfectly disguises his real 
thoughts and feelings from penetration or interpretation. 
Grant is to all appearances as emotionless as death ! Surprises 
never change the expression of a feature of his fixed face, and 
danger, however imminent and threatening, cannot quicken a 
pulse of his heart or shake a nerve in his frame of steel. His 
habit has never been to expose himself to unnecessar}' danger, 
but in the crisis of battles, where his presence has been neces- 
sary, he has always appeared, and the composure and uncon- 
cern of his manner never failed to reassure and moralize his 
troops, though death was holding high carnival and swathing 
his ranks, as the swinging scythe swaths the meadows in har- 
vest season. 

In Grant's social relations and domestic habits there is a 
plainness and simplicity that takes a fascinating and fast hold 
on the affections and confidence of all who are within the 
circle of intimate associations with him or his family. He 
permits no ostentatious display or parade of rank and position ; 
no museum of the trophies of his victories ; no drawing rooms 
tapestried with captured flags ; no conservatories displaying 
the medals, swords, valuable gifts and rich testimonials of an 
a])preciative and grateful people surround the plain mansion 
of the successful Captain of one hundred great battles. His 
home represents the man, and is an expression of his real 
character. It is marked by simplicity and republican plain- 
ness, yet the material furnishing it will burnish and wear with 
time, descending as heir-looms to the third and fourth genera- 



17 

tions of his children with brighter lustre from wear and with 
unimpaired strength. His unaffected manners place all his 
friends and guests at ease, and his hospitalities are dispensed 
with a fullness of heart and freedom as unrestraining as wel- 
come can make them. The presence of the foremost General 
of the age is forgotten in the ease of approach to his person, 
and the unostentatious frankness of the reception. He never 
introduces the subject of his campaigns or battles, and con- 
strains his friends to respect the inviolability of his modest 
appreciation of his services, his life and his virtues. 

In these striking characteristics there is a novelty and 
charm that wins and strengthens the confidence of men, as 
they are brought into closer intimacy and relation to Grant. 
His generosity to his Lieutenants, who shared with him the 
toils and perils of his campaign, and his forgetfulness of self 
in acknowledging their services, stamps his nobility of nature 
with genuine greatness. His words of praise are as imperish- 
able as his censure is destructive of military character. He 
sticks as close to his friends as death to mortality ; and yet 
they must fulfill his ideas of loyalty and duty to gain his offi- 
cial confidence or public acknowledgment. He is notable 
for his tenderness of reputation, and never censures where 
justice and pubHc duty will be justified by silence. But when 
his condemnation is demanded for the vindication of truth and 
history, it falls with the fatal destructiveness of the thunder- 
bolt, and scathes as the lightning, branch and trunk, of sap 
and life. Such are the notable characteristics of Grant that 
elevate the true grandeur and sublimity of his character, 
placing him in prominent and singular relief above any Cap- 
tain of the day in moral excellence and practical usefulness. 
The adulations and applause of people of whatever taste, pro- 
fession and station, do not intoxicate his brain, exhilarate or 
inflame the self respect and decorum, instinctive and immacu- 
late in the composition of men of genuine greatness and of 
Grant's mould. His elevation has been sudden. The height 
is dizzy. His position is cast all about with difficulties and 
dangers. If he is true to himself and takes into his confidence 
men of the right stamp, his fame will be imperishable. 

Grant's character has been tried in a school of adversity of 



18 

the keenest tests. His baptism into its fires was very deep 
when he wielded the axe that cut the wood he himself carted 
into St. Louis, and sold by the load in open market places for 
the supply of his daily food and raiment. But if the baser 
dross of his weaker nature was burned out in the scorching 
crucible that consumes the grosser composition of man, the 
stronger metal that no flame can destroy will be purified and 
refined ; and like the steel of the cementing furnace it will 
improve in ring and quality as the heat is intensified and the 
process protracted. The wrestle witii adversity is hard. Many 
strong men, though thrown in it, rise in renewed strength 
and strangle the adversary. But the contest with prosperity is 
harder. The gladiators in its lists are better skilled in the 
dexterous locks and trips that bring down the strongest wrest- 
lers with fatal shock, irretrievably and incurably straining 
joint, spine and marrow. 

Grant's struggle with prosperity has commenced with every 
guarantee or success. No wrestler has ever been more strongly 
tempted by the tricks " of the ring " to go in and try the 
chances. But the tempting baits of flattering words he has 
parried by a diplomatic silence that would have put the skill 
of a Nesseelrode or a Metternich to its adroitest shifts in re- 
fining words and concealing ideas that should draw responses. 
He will not " go in." So far he has been strong in the wisdom 
that closes the ear to the siren voice that sings most 
sweetly when attuned to adulation and praise. Strong 
natures that can resist the intoxication of this old charmer, 
have been sifted of the chaff" of their composition, and will not 
be likely to yield to the transports of any fugitive and vain 
ecstacies. The conqueror whose heart has throbbed with the 
raptures of a hundred victories, and gone up in the rhapso- 
dies that rise as grateful incense to the throne of mercy, is un- 
moved by the unmeaning homage paid to position and power. 
Grant cannot be cajoled by his enemies. His friends know 
him too well to approach him by flattery. Gusts and blasts 
have swayed him to and fro, and he has been bent by and 
bowed by their fury, but no branch or limb has been torn fi'om 
the trunk to disfigure the symmetry of the status of his full 
growth, made stronger by struggles in storms. He stands 



19 

among the great men of the age, stalwart in his grandeur as 
the oak in its strength among the trees of the forest. The 
stream that washes the " placers " of their common earth, 
does not more thoroughly separate the impurities from their 
gold, than time has purified the dross of Grant's nature. The 
unalloyed man is left in the prime and strength of manhood, 
fulfilling his destiny in the upheavals and convulsions of the 
nineteenth century, changing civilization and accelerating 
with electric speed God's purposes in creating man. 

In all the hours of the gigantic conflict now ended in the 
throes of the keenest agonies of the government for life ; when 
the strongest manhood of the land staggered under the shock ; 
when loyalty to government was dismayed ; when the conti- 
nent discovered by Columbus vibrated under the strain of 
war ; when faith in God to vindicate the right was doubted by 
the good ; when mourners were in all our streets and every 
household was agonized with woes keener than the woes of 
Absalom^s father and king. Grant, single and alone, never 
doubted. When Joshua on the hill of Gideon commanded 
the sun to stand still, his faith was not stronger. Grant was 
the moral " Atlas " who bore upon his strong shoulders the 
civilization of the world and saved to man the imprescripta- 
ble right of self-government. 

The singularity of this character is its completeness. No 
incongruous or disturbing elements mingle in its composition. 
Nothing of ignobility belittles its genuine greatness. It has 
penetrated every act of a life signalized by devotion to duty 
and self-sacrifice. It bears scrutiny. It has more than the 
" guinea stamp " — that con be counterfeited. But the "die" 
that struck the seal to Grant's patent of nobility cannot be 
counterfeited. In imperishable letters the title-scroll bears 
the words, " an honest man " — God was the author of the in- 
scription and fixed His autograph monogram, " immortal." 



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